Mobile platforms such as aircraft, ground vehicles, and watercraft are typically run through a litany of full-scale tests during product development and validation. Such full-scale testing is typically expensive and time consuming as early-production and prototype components are often required to assemble the full-scale mobile platform for testing. Costs are further compounded for mobile platforms such as aircraft and watercraft due to the inherent design complexity and size of such platforms.
A growing area of mobile platform design, and thus, mobile platform testing, relates to so-called “unmanned” mobile platforms capable of being remotely controlled and/or remotely commanded. Such unmanned mobile platforms include unmanned ground vehicles, unmanned water vehicles, and unmanned flying vehicles. The unmanned mobile platforms may be used in a military application for surveillance and/or as a weapon and may also be used in a non-military application for inspection of dangerous and/or hard-to-reach places such as pipelines, forest fires, and power plants. Such mobile platforms are typically capable of being remotely controlled/commanded and are responsive to instructions from a remotely-located control station.
Coordination between the control station and the unmanned mobile platform is typically established via wireless communication. Control commands are generally input at the control station and wirelessly communicated to the mobile platform to control operation thereof. Communication between the control station and the mobile platform, as well as validation of control software and processing circuitry incorporated into the mobile platform, is accomplished during design and testing of the mobile platform, control software, and processing circuitry.
A conventional full-scale test for an unmanned mobile platform, such as an unmanned ground vehicle or an unmanned air vehicle, typically requires a full-scale, fully operational, mobile platform. The mobile platform is usually remotely controlled by the control station to allow test engineers and the like to direct operation of the mobile platform during testing. The mobile platform is conventionally a full-scale test specimen, fully equipped with processing circuitry and control software. Test engineers are therefore able to validate not only the mobile platform, but the processing circuitry and control software as well.
Manufacturers of mobile platforms, unmanned or otherwise, usually combine actual full-scale testing with laboratory testing, simulation, and reduced-scale testing (i.e., model testing) to mitigate the cost of product development and validation testing. For example, manufacturers of mobile platforms often use reduced-scale models for wind tunnel testing and design development. The reduction in scale allows manufactures to use smaller test facilities (e.g., smaller wind tunnels) and allows for review of an outer surface without requiring a full-scale model.
Full-scale performance testing of unmanned mobile platforms is often problematic as expensive and complex processing circuitry and control software, capable of receiving and processing commands from a central control station, must be located on the mobile platform during testing. The full-scale platform translates into a larger vehicle (i.e., air or ground vehicle) and, thus, increases the cost and complexity of the test. Furthermore, should the full-scale unmanned mobile platform experience difficulty during testing and become damaged, the expensive processing circuitry and software carried by the mobile platform is likely to become damaged or destroyed.